Abstract

Over the last decade, multivariate data analysis techniques have seen wider acceptance and use in almost all fields of scientific inquiry. Although many reasons can be advocated, the following two represent the most important ones:

The realization that in many scientific inquiries it is necessary to analyze the simultaneous relationships among three or more variables.

The advent of the high speed computer with large storage facility and the development of readily available and easy to use software packages for implementing multivariate analysis (MVA). ¹